Nucleic acid-based technologies are the mainstay of the Department of Defense (DOD), Department of Health Services (DHS), Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), and other government agencies' strategy to detect and identify biological threat agents. Nucleic acid-based methods, particularly polymerase chain reaction (PCR) amplification tests, have several advantages which include higher sensitivity and often lower cost than other approaches. However, PCR techniques target only one biological agent, requiring sequential or separate testing for each biological threat agent individually. It is desirable to have a testing method which allows identification of multiple threat agents simultaneously or within a contemporaneous testing period.
Currently, because several tests are required to detect and identify threat agents, prioritization of testing for biological threat agents must be based upon intelligent guesses. The limitations of this approach are highlighted by the former Soviet Union's doctrine of simultaneously releasing a “cocktail” of multiple threat agents during a biological attack.